I mentioned last month that October was The Calm Before, whilst November looked set to be The Storm.
This is because November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I was planning to write the customary 50,000 words in 30 days.
Well... November was certainly stormy, but it was more like a blustery bad day at the beach rather than Hurricane Katrina. I finished the month with 32,000 words, which is nowhere near target. I have hit the target once before in November 2013, which is how I wrote The Sheriff, but never since.
So, this month was a little disappointing. My excuses include having a baby, a bout of food poisoning, and discovering Downton Abbey for the first time. I have just watched Series 3 Episode 5. Noooooo!
Nevertheless, this has still been my most productive month of writing so far this year, even topping my Rio-inspired writing binge in August. Over 1000 words a day is not too shabby. This means my third Nephos novel is now at 83,151 words. I'm only about a third of the way through the story, which means I might actually be writing an epic.
A Game of Thrones is 298,000 words, so I could be approaching George R R Martin levels of prose.
What else have I done this month?
1. Guest Lecture - I spoke to the first-year students on the Creative Writing course at the University of Birmingham. My talk was similar to my Book To The Future talk and covered self-publishing and self-marketing.
2. Happy Birthday Circ - our collaborative novel Circ celebrated its 2nd birthday, having been published on 25 November 2014. The Circ launch seems like yesterday. I interviewed myself to mark the occasion.
3. Christmas Posts - I have written two festive posts to raise awareness of Festive Treats, our free anthology of Christmas stories. One post is about how to win a Christmas pub quiz and the other offers 50 of the "best" Christmas cracker jokes. These have prompted huge numbers of visitors to my website, which shows that nonsensical click-bait drives more traffic than book reviews and writing advice. Duly noted.
Next month: Christmas time. To honour the season of good will, I am going to review at least two novels by fellow self-published authors. After all, writers should help other writers. Also, the winner of the BWG Winter Competition will be announced!
Sign up to Simon's newsletter to hear more about his reading and writing projects.
This is because November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I was planning to write the customary 50,000 words in 30 days.
Well... November was certainly stormy, but it was more like a blustery bad day at the beach rather than Hurricane Katrina. I finished the month with 32,000 words, which is nowhere near target. I have hit the target once before in November 2013, which is how I wrote The Sheriff, but never since.
So, this month was a little disappointing. My excuses include having a baby, a bout of food poisoning, and discovering Downton Abbey for the first time. I have just watched Series 3 Episode 5. Noooooo!
Nevertheless, this has still been my most productive month of writing so far this year, even topping my Rio-inspired writing binge in August. Over 1000 words a day is not too shabby. This means my third Nephos novel is now at 83,151 words. I'm only about a third of the way through the story, which means I might actually be writing an epic.
A Game of Thrones is 298,000 words, so I could be approaching George R R Martin levels of prose.
What else have I done this month?
1. Guest Lecture - I spoke to the first-year students on the Creative Writing course at the University of Birmingham. My talk was similar to my Book To The Future talk and covered self-publishing and self-marketing.
2. Happy Birthday Circ - our collaborative novel Circ celebrated its 2nd birthday, having been published on 25 November 2014. The Circ launch seems like yesterday. I interviewed myself to mark the occasion.
3. Christmas Posts - I have written two festive posts to raise awareness of Festive Treats, our free anthology of Christmas stories. One post is about how to win a Christmas pub quiz and the other offers 50 of the "best" Christmas cracker jokes. These have prompted huge numbers of visitors to my website, which shows that nonsensical click-bait drives more traffic than book reviews and writing advice. Duly noted.
Next month: Christmas time. To honour the season of good will, I am going to review at least two novels by fellow self-published authors. After all, writers should help other writers. Also, the winner of the BWG Winter Competition will be announced!
Sign up to Simon's newsletter to hear more about his reading and writing projects.